On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > In general, @def... directives are highly irregular in their use of
> > the braces and the magic conversions they perform on their
> > arguments. Since these conversions are all specially written for
> > this family of commands, some of the aspects of their behavior are
> > next to impossible to grasp without experimenting, especially if you
> > use special characters such as `[' and `{'.
>
> The brace problem you mean is this?
>
> @deffn {foo bar} name arguments...
Yes. This use of braces is not allowed anywhere else in Texinfo; the
function which normally reads input barfs when it sees `{'. To make this
work, the code which processes @deffn gobbles all the line and processes
it with special code.
The usual way to expand macros in Texinfo constructs is to run the entire
line via macro-expanding code _before_ you process the rest of the @deffn
line, because a macro could expand into characters which are special to
@deffn, such as the braces themselves.
However, macro expansion works by recursive invocation of the normal input
read code, and that code chokes on unescaped braces...
> What about creating a variant of @deffn, say, @definition, which
>
> . is a regular texinfo function
> . follows the standard syntactical rules
> . works with macros
> . doesn't format its arguments?
>
> People than have to say e.g.
>
> @definition @w{cate gory} name @var{arg1} [@var{arg2}] ...
It's okay with me. I'm not a TeXpert, but IIRC, the main problems with
@def... directives is in that they have a variable argument list, and
that is hard to support in texinfo.tex. Karl, am I right?
> BTW, which are the messy parts of macros (besides the @deffn
> irregularities)?
I meant those irregularities. Everything else is solvable, as we do in
other directives where macros are fully supported.
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